FORT MACLEOD, Alta. — Tears froze on Gord Hester’s face as he looked at the remains of the horse training operation he runs with his wife, Sandy.
A Jan. 4 grass fire, whipped by high winds, destroyed most of S.R. Horse Training, a training and boarding facility northwest of Fort Macleod.
The wind remained unrelenting Jan. 7, though not as strong as the 100 km/h chinook of Jan. 4, as the Hesters helped friends and neighbours with cleanup efforts on their farm.
Gord, his face working with emotion, deferred queries to Sandy, whose inner fire is helping her cope with the consequences of the outer one.
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“I think I’m going to change my licence plate,” Sandy mused as she watched farm employee Vicky Atherton scrape through rubble with a pitchfork. “I don’t want that name anymore.”
Her licence plate is the name of her prized stallion, Setfire.
A metal sign at the farm’s gate welcomes friends, but it and the family home are almost all that is left of the operation that included an arena, several barns and outbuildings, corrals and hay stocks.
But Sandy, who has been training horses since her youth and describes it as a lifetime passion, plans to rebuild and carry on.
“At first my husband didn’t want to, but he knows this is the love of my life,” said Sandy. “He agreed to rebuild what we can.”
She plans to carry on business temporarily in a smaller arena nearby owned by friend Carrie Miller Mitchell. The 55 horses on site on the day of the fire were saved through the efforts of neighbours who showed up with horse trailers. The animals are farmed out at various places.
A cat named Handsome was singed in the fire but is recovering.
“He’s not quite so handsome now,” said Sandy.
She was in nearby Fort Macleod when the call came that fire was encroaching on the farm. At first, she and Gord thought the fire had missed them, but then it turned.
“I’d gone to get something from the house. Somebody pulled me away because the fire was burning the skirting at the back of my house,” said Sandy.
The house was saved but little else: no tack, no barns, not so much as a hoof pick or Gord’s prized set of spurs.
The blaze was started by improper disposal of stove ashes on a property southwest of the Hesters. Fire burned a swath 67 kilometres long and about half a km wide at its widest point.
It was one of two that burned in the Municipal District of Willow Creek on the same day, taxing fire control efforts to their limits.
A grass fire at Nanton burned 40 to 60 km, destroyed four homes and numerous other buildings, including Paradise Hill Farm east of Nanton. The greenhouse operation supplies tomatoes to Calgary Co-op stores.
Cynthia Vizzutti of the MD of Willow Creek said fire crews from within the district and beyond, plus Hutterite colonies and other individuals, did an outstanding job with fire control efforts.
